J. S07043/18

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION – SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA :

:

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

PENNSYLVANIA

v. :

:

THOMAS A. GOODEN, : No. 232 EDA 2017

:

 Appellant :

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence, August 25, 2016,

in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County

Criminal Division at No. CP-51-CR-0002482-2015

BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., PANELLA, J., AND FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E. 

MEMORANDUM BY FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E.: FILED APRIL 16, 2018

Appellant, Thomas Gooden, appeals from the August 25, 2016 

judgment of sentence entered by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia 

County following his conviction of homicide by vehicle, accidents involving 

death or personal injury, accidents involving death or serious injury—not 

properly licensed, involuntary manslaughter, three counts of aggravated 

assault by vehicle, and four counts of recklessly endangering another 

person. After careful review, we affirm.

The trial court provided the following factual and procedural history:

On July 13, 2013, at about 2:43 a.m., [appellant] 

was driving his automobile on Lincoln Drive near 

Morris Street in Philadelphia. At a curve in the 

roadway, [appellant] lost control of his vehicle (a 

Subaru), which crossed into the opposite bound lane 

and collided with a vehicle (a Nissan) driven by 

Angela Terry. As a result of the collision, 
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[appellant’s] passenger, Ashley Gant Madison, was 

killed and another passenger, Bria Staley, was 

injured. Angela Terry and her passenger, 

Harvey Stratton, were injured. A third vehicle, (a 

Honda) was involved in the accident, but [appellant] 

was not charged with offenses relating to the third 

vehicle.

A jury convicted [appellant] of accident involving 

death or personal injury, accident involving death—

not properly licensed, homicide by vehicle, 

involuntary manslaughter, three counts of 

aggravated assault by vehicle, and four counts of 

recklessly endangering another person. [Appellant] 

received an aggregate sentence of eight to 

16 years[’ imprisonment.]

Trial court opinion, 6/2/17 at 1-2 (citations omitted). Appellant filed a 

timely notice of appeal to this court. The trial court ordered appellant to file 

a concise statement of errors complained of on appeal pursuant to 

Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b), and appellant timely complied. The trial court filed an 

opinion pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 1925(a).

Appellant raises the following issue for our review:

Did the lower court err in denying [appellant’s] 

Frye[

1] motion pursuant to Pa.R.E. 702 where no 

scientific basis existed for the assumptions 

underlying the calculation of [appellant’s] speed by 

the Commonwealth’s accident reconstruction expert?

Appellant’s brief at 3.

Appellant specifically avers that the Commonwealth’s accident 

reconstruction expert, Philadelphia Police Officer William Lackman 

 

1 Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923).
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(“Officer Lackman”), “employed no methodology at all” when he reached the 

“assumption that [appellant], ‘[drove] the curve as he was supposed to have 

been [sic] in the curve.’” (Appellant’s brief at 11.) Appellant further 

contends that the manner in which Officer Lackman reached his conclusion is 

“deeply flawed and simply cannot meet the Frye standard.” (Id.) Put 

another way, at the Frye hearing, appellant’s counsel contended that “the 

methodology that [appellant] exceeded that critical speed as the cause of 

the accident and then also the methodology used to exclude other possible 

causes [are] not scientifically accepted.” (Notes of testimony, 12/21/15 at 

3-4.)

When reviewing a trial court’s admission of expert testimony under the

Frye standard,

2 we are held to the following:

as to the standard of appellate review that applies to 

the Frye issue, [our supreme court] has stated that 

the admission of expert scientific testimony is an 

evidentiary matter for the trial court’s discretion and 

should not be disturbed on appeal unless the trial 

 

2 The Frye standard is as follows:

Just when a scientific principle or discovery crosses 

the line between the experimental and demonstrable 

stages is difficult to define. Somewhere in this 

twilight zone the evidential force of the principle 

must be recognized, and while courts will go a long 

way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a 

well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the 

thing from which the deduction is made must be 

sufficiently established to have gained general 

acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs.

Frye, 293 F. at 1014.
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court abuses its discretion. See Commonwealth v. 

Zook, 615 A.2d 1, 11 (Pa. 1992), cert. denied, 507 

U.S. 974 (1993). An abuse of discretion may not be 

found merely because an appellate court might have 

reached a different conclusion, but requires a result 

of manifest unreasonableness, or partiality, 

prejudice, bias, or ill-will, or such lack of support as 

to be clearly erroneous. Paden v. Baker Concrete 

Constr., Inc., 658 A.2d 341, 343 (Pa. 1995).

Grady v. Frito-Lay, Inc., 839 A.2d 1038, 1046 (Pa. 2003). The Grady

court re-affirmed Pennsylvania’s adoption of the Frye standard, as it applies 

only to an expert’s methodology. Id. at 1047.

With respect to application of the Frye standard, our 

[supreme court] has “made it clear that Frye is not 

implicated every time science comes into the 

courtroom; rather, it applies only to proffered expert 

testimony involving novel science.” 

Commonwealth v. Dengler, 890 A.2d 372, 382 

(Pa. 2005); see also Grady, 839 A.2d at 1045 

(finding Frye is applicable to novel science, as well 

as where scientific methods are utilized in [a] novel

way). Our [supreme court] has noted that a 

“reasonably broad meaning should be ascribed to the 

term ‘novel,’” and “a Frye hearing is warranted 

when a trial judge has articulable grounds to believe 

that an expert witness has not applied accepted 

scientific methodology in a conventional fashion in 

reaching his or her conclusions.” Betz v. Pneumo 

Abex LLC, et al., 44 A.3d 27, 53 (Pa. 2012). 

Further, what constitutes novel scientific evidence is 

usually decided on a case-by-case basis as there is 

some flexibility in the construction, as “science 

deemed novel at the outset may lose its novelty and 

become generally accepted in the scientific 

community at a later date, or the strength of the 

proponent’s proffer may affect the Frye

determination.” Dengler, 890 A.2d at 382. As [our 

supreme court] noted in Dengler:
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Just when a scientific principle or 

discovery crosses the line between the 

experimental and demonstrable stages is 

difficult to define. Somewhere in this 

twilight zone the evidential force of the 

principle must be recognized, and while 

courts will go a long way in admitting 

expert testimony deduced from a wellrecognized scientific principle or 

discovery, the thing from which the 

deduction is made must be sufficiently 

established to have gained general 

acceptance in the particular field in which 

it belongs.

Id. at 380-381 (quoting Frye) (citation omitted).

Commonwealth v. Walker, 92 A.3d 766, 790 (Pa. 2014). 

As noted by the trial court, Officer Lackman based his opinion on the 

following:

1. Position of stopped vehicles;

2. Damage to the asphalt in the roadway;

3. Interview with [appellant];

4. Interview with police officers on the scene;

5. Observing damage to the vehicles;

6. Photographing the vehicles;

7. Calculating the impact;

8. Calculating the point of maximum engagement;

9. The location of scattered automobile parts;

10. Calculating the trajectory of the vehicles;

11. Mathematical formulation to calculate the 

critical speed of the curve; and

12. Obtaining the coefficient of friction.

Trial court opinion, 6/2/17 at 4 (citations omitted). Based upon our review 

of the record, we agree with the trial court’s conclusion that it was 

“immaterial” whether appellant’s speed exceeded 75 miles per hour when he 

attempted to negotiate the curve on Lincoln Street; rather, the critical fact 
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was that appellant “was driving twice the speed limit on a wet night on a 

curved roadway.” (Id. at 9.) Indeed, appellant’s own expert, 

James Halikman, testified that appellant was traveling over 50 miles per 

hour—twice the posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour. (Notes of 

testimony, 12/21/15 at 112.) 

We therefore find that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when 

it admitted Officer Lackman’s expert testimony.

Judgment of sentence affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 4/16/18